Other Nightmares
by DaveysDD
Summary: A man stumbles through the warped reality of Earths past and his own nightmarish future. Guilt and savage beings hunt him along the way.


**Nightmares, Dreams And Fragments Of Hell**

**Howling devils at my door.**  
In search of the protrusions of limbs with bone to tear and to crush.  
The wild hunger of evil is not a hunger for sustenance, but rather a hunger for human pain. I ran into the darkness.

Time running out. Appointment. Dress yourself, brush your teeth, too late to eat. Something. Run out and run to. Still it's better than running out and running from.  
Never believed me and now it's too late. Now we must run from.

**Someone screaming in the shower.** It must be god, maker of sherry and other smooth things. It, god, was conceived through coincidence. And through coincidence I walked past his house, heard God singing in the shower. Songs that dictated obedience and sacrifice. God began to scream as the water he showered in turned to the blood of his slain worshipers instead of the blood of those his worshippers had slain. Sacrifice by mistake. It was a misunderstanding you hear. Dead bodies don't react no matter how often you stick a prong into their eyes. And blind they were, long before they died.

**A Day in the life** and the reading of newspapers. Printed truth according to your point of view if you wrote it, point, point, point. Lennon and Lenin. Godless Gods. The one singing for harmony while the other reluctantly fathers a monster. What is an idol, what is a god, why do we need them? **  
**The making of a tidy man. Tie and suit coupled with punctuality.  
"Would you like a drink? Coffee, water or tea?"  
"A glass of water would be fine, thank you."  
I should have worn a tie. Looks better.  
"Misters God and Satan will be with you in a moment."  
"Thank you."

**Pictures on the wall of both men.** Partners in the business of belief. Products that sell good or bad because people believe them to be either good or bad. I bought their products like most people do. Now I wanted to sell them.  
The two men entered the room. Both white-haired. Both irritated.  
They both greeted me with handshakes.

**Mr. God began** "As you know we are a very large company with locations throughout the globe. We…"  
"Worldwide," Mr. Satan interrupted, " worldwide is a better term for it. More compact."  
Mr. God glanced at Mr. Satan. "Your corrections Mr. Satan, are not needed. In this business my word is the law that all of our employees live by"  
"Adhere to. Sounds better. Also dear friend you're forgetting my important stake in this business. Without a night there can be no day."

I'd heard of love-hate relationships before, but this was the first successful hate-hate relationship that I'd ever seen.  
"Uh,.." I started. they'd clearly forgotten why the three of us were in this room, they were no longer aware of my presence.  
Both looked at me as though I were a fly in their soup;  
"Who are you and what are you doing in here sir?" Asked both in unison.  
"You invited me here." I said.

**"Coming for a handout are you?" **Voices booming, I began to tremble with fear. "On your knees and beg for mercy slave! Pray to God or Satan for the salvation or the damnation of your insignificant human soul." Both suddenly held and came at me with bullwhips, making them whistle in the air and crack things around me into obedient submission. Chains appeared on the floor that went murky with heads of shackles that snapped around my limbs. Christian Laocoon. I melted, merging with the slime covered floor. "On your knees slave" Whips cracking, I, the slave sobbing and suddenly naked, heard my own muffled, faraway cries of desperation, cries for help coming in sheep-like bahs and pig squeals that went unheard.

**Spikes shot through my knee caps** while the whips flayed my skin away in slivers of long, neat strips. I hurried to some dark edge of my mind to pull a sheet or pillow out of the blackness of it. I covered my head and closed my eyes when the sheets and pillows were torn from my trembling hands and I tried, fanatically, to dream away the whips and the spikes that began to tear me asunder.

**A Day in the life** and the reading of newspapers. Printed truth according to point of view, point, point, point. Lennon and Lenin. Godless wonders. The one singing for harmony while the other reluctantly defecates a Stalin. What is an idol, what is a god, why do we need them?  
"I know I'm right cause god done told me so!" He was a believer. I knew that.  
"But what if god didn't tell you so?" I interrogated, "What if you're only dreaming?" I added, knowing that this would make him angry. That was the devil in me. Devil inside, devil inside, every single one of us….

"You gonna burn in hell boy. You keep talkin' like `at ummo have ta killya wunna these days. The time comin' " he warned, "the time is comin'!"

Years ago on the outskirts of a sleepy town. Train Station. Everyone comes but no one comes here. They just go. The last lovers loving but careful not to further populate their dying world.  
All leaving. Thank god for Sherry.  
"Boy" he said sweating and worn, "that Wild turkey was good!"

**The sweat of Sherry, a salty, fiery** concoction of curves and soft skin. Aged about 35 or 6 years, blond of course, always blond more or less, mixed with Wild Turkey or wild what-have-you, a living wet dream because nothing further than the body and it's orifices ever receive notice of any kind. Apes grunting and howling and falling into drunken sleep next to a crying whore.

"We got coffee?" he asked.  
"Yeah." I said, "We got coffee."

One enjoys one's own tragic story. Man alone. Sacrificing himself each day, every day. A block of stone that supports an ungrateful building and it's content, society and all the people that give it it's face. Man all by himself working diligently. A world starts to crumble and all of the buildings and houses on it, with it.

**"I'm cold" He said**  
"Shit." Quietly I spoke to myself looking through him at the ground that suddenly disappeared under oozing red that carried gut and chipped bone with it. Ships at sea.  
He said; "Drops of salty water. They burn, it burns. Freezing"

Years ago at a street market I was asked "Whatsa it-a gonna be-ya? Make-a-uppa you minda." Impatient seller of overly expensive tomatoes. He was no true Italian. Only pretended to be. Fake accent because The image sells. Make-a uppa you minda.

Freezing and burning and dying. Get all three free of charge and fragments from a bomb as well. No need to make-a uppa you minda.

He tried to say something. Instead, sput, sput, sput, an engine that cannot speak, one that emits bubbles of blood instead, bubbles that pop in the thinness of the air. Salty water running down. Is death darkness or light or nothing at all? We had so much fun together.  
Salty rain from the cloudy, bloodshot skies of my eyes pouring over him. I can't stop. Too much. Two young men in hell. One on the way to heaven and the other doomed to remain in Purgatory.

**"He, like so many others before him is a liar** and a cheat. That is why he should be punished. That is why he must be punished!  
"You know what they'll do to him. They loved him. Now they'll hate him, all trying to save their own skins when the weather changes for the bad."  
"We have many requirements of the one who is the right one.  
Many stipulations that were etched in stone long ago.  
All, not merely a few, must be met. He's a liar, a fraud. We must deal with him!"  
"Jesus Christ! Do you know what you're saying?"  
"Yes, of course I know what I'm saying. You Romans don't like him either.  
So why all the fuss? Why not just get rid of him?"

**Knocking and clawing and tearing at my door.** Like wild animals..  
I was sleeping and the sleep that I slept was full of names and nightmares.  
Once awake I rubbled my eyes hoping for a sharp view of lovely, peaceful reality.  
"Swallow it." The staring, commanding eyes of wolves. Magnifying glasses and holes being burned into paper. Eyes of glass and hatred like fire.  
We never really liked each other, did we?  
Poison burning downwards to a stomach full of rotgut.  
It forced me to drink and the drink forced me to die but it was only a nightmare, wasn't it?

**Thighs and breasts and things with curves **and smells that smell just as they should.  
The meaning of paradise written in letters that have smooth arcs and soft circles that spin the minds of man to a drunken wobbly rotation.  
Sweat like Sherry.  
Her breath smelled like wet leaves and hot coffee. And she was and so was I.  
Love is a lovely blindfold that becomes transparent with time.  
We never really did know one another, did we?

**All over the globe people work and run, love and hate**, worship and cheat, live for and die for. Gods and governments and peoples and nations and things that divide and things that unite. A brutal monster is eating a world away and the world looks away pretending not to notice.

"We never really did care for one another did we?" he asked.  
"No. I suppose we didn't. You liked the way I looked. You even like the way I look now. But you don't like me. So there's really no reason in putting off the inevitable is there?"  
"No" he answered, "I suppose there isn't."  
She expected a quick, clean separation.  
He placed a gun to his head, pulled the trigger and exploded himself into small, uneven, bloody pieces, ending the need to ask or answer further questions.

**They've shattered the door to small uneven fragments** and are storming through my house. Giant vermin that no longer must fear or hide from me.  
Now I must hide from them. I hurry to some dark place, hoping they won't find me, I pull a sheet or pillow over my head, I close my eyes until I feel both the sheets and pillows being torn from my trembling hands and then I try, fanatically, to dream myself away from the teeth and claws that I know are about to tear me apart.

© David Beckham


End file.
